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I load for a buddy who has a 10mm glock. He has shot thouands of my cast handloads through it and claims they outshoot jacketed in his gun by a bunch. I keep the pressures on the safe side and use hard alloys.

Soldier of God, sixgun junky, Retired electrical lineman. My office was a 100 feet in the air, closer to God the better

To mention the hammer forged barrels and notoriously short or non existent throats of the Gaston wonder vs the nice long throats of the Martini rifles with Metford rifling and no lead issues would invite more debate...

And therein lies the nut of my experience...

Years ago I had a romance with the 10mm, and had a pair of 10s with polygonal rifling-- a Glock 20 and a Springfield Omega. The Omega never showed sign of leading, and I never had an experience with excessive pressures.

The Glock never had a leading problem either, but it did have an annoying tendency to show pressure signs. What I observed was this-- The Glock did not have a leade worth mentioning. As a result, lead would build up behind the chamber ledge, presumably because the lack of a leade was causing the chember ledge to shave lead off the bullet. SWCs were particularly problematic in this respect. A partial solution to this was to use brands of brass that were thicker at the case mouth. But that caused other problems with failures to go fully into battery because the seated bullet --sized .001-.002" over "groove" diameter, or .404" sized diameter)-- caused an excessive finished diameter of the loaded round, and as a result, would sometimes not chamber fully.

As the Omega did not have such problems, I sold the Glock, and the Omega went on to a stellar career at my weekly pin matches. With no difficulties whatsoever...

I've since experienced the same problem I had with the Glock in a couple of 1911 45s with conventional rifling. So my conclusion is this-- the problem with Glocks & cast bullets has nothing to do with polygonal rifling, and everything to do with how they cut --or don't cut-- chamber throats.

Last edited by S.R.Custom; 07-31-2008 at 01:42 AM.
Reason: clarification

“If your only tool is a hammer, then all your problems start to look like people who need to be beaten with a hammer.”

To mention the hammer forged barrels and notoriously short or non existent throats of the Gaston wonder vs the nice long throats of the Martini rifles with Metford rifling and no lead issues would invite more debate right Mic?

Not that I am poking the swarm with a stick. lol

Yes... And, then there's Sir Joseph Whitworth... He's the guy who paved the way for the Metford, and invented polygonal rifling. There's a great article on him and those developments in Rifle #205, and they're subtitle is outstanding: "The Man Who Invented Accuracy!"

Originally Posted by SuperMag

And therein lies the nut of my experience...

Years ago I had a romance with the 10mm, and had a pair of 10s with polygonal rifling-- a Glock 20 and a Springfield Omega. The Omega never showed sign of leading, and I never had an experience with excessive pressures.

The Glock never had a leading problem either, but it did have an annoying tendency to show pressure signs. What I observed was this-- The Glock did not have a leade worth mentioning. As a result, lead would build up behind the chamber ledge, presumably because the lack of a leade was causing the chember ledge to shave lead off the bullet. SWCs were particularly problematic in this respect. A partial solution to this was to use brands of brass that were thicker at the case mouth. But that caused other problems with failures to go fully into battery because the seated bullet --sized .001-.002" over "groove" diameter, or .404" sized diameter)-- caused an excessive finished diameter of the loaded round, and as a result, would sometimes not chamber fully.

As the Omega did not have such problems, I sold the Glock, and the Omega went on to a stellar career at my weekly pin matches. With no difficulties whatsoever...

I've since experienced the same problem I had with the Glock in a couple of 1911 45s with conventional rifling. So my conclusion is this-- the problem with Glocks & cast bullets has nothing to do with polygonal rifling, and everything to do with how they cut --or don't cut-- chamber throats.

SuperMag, you don't mention what your pressure signs were, and I'm not discounting the abrupt throating in the Glock chamber, but keep in mind that Glocks have really sloppy chambers to encourage reliability in feeding. Those loose chambers often prevent the 10mm from getting to it's full potential in the Glock.

Since the 10mm is featuring so prominently in this discussion, I'll throw in to the mix an even more interesting twist (please pardon the pun). What about other strange rifling patterns causing problems with lead bullets, such as the rifling in the original 10mm, the Bren Ten? It had semi-custom barrels with Obermeyer "R5" rifling. This is more like conventional rifling than polygonal, but the edges of the lands were tapered at an angle so as to improve the seal through less deformation of the bullet and eliminating the deep corners of the grooves where, theoretically, the bullets do not fill in, even if they are obturating...

Mic, my experience with the Glock 19 I bought about 1985 or so was vastly opposite of the sloppy chamber you speak of, indeed it was very tightly chambered and often would refuse reloaded ammo that my TA-90 ,a CZ-75 clone would eat with relish and mustard and onions.

The Glock simply put was not a gun I had any faith in unless and if I only fed it factory ammo.
I on the other hand was not rich enough to feed that gun, nor any other a diet of only factory ammo, often buying it only for the brass when I stumbled upon a buy or for the Massad Ayoob approved carry mode I bought into at the time.
I simply could not afford to keep the 19 so it went down the road, the TA-90 followed not long after by the way when the extractor broke and a replacement was nigh impossible to get. I lost faith in it.

The Glock also had a tendency for me to point high, it took a great deal of thought and worked against instinct to get center mass hits.

But, the reason it went down the road was purely me being frugal and interested in reloading ammo for my gun that would feed and fire, the chamber of that Glock simply would not accept freely and that drove me from it. I was not interested in a gun that demanded factory ammo when I knew there were designs out there that were much more user friendly.

Sloppy chambered was certainly not a apt description of that gun.

Boolits= as God laid it into the soil,,grand old Galena,the Silver Stream graciously hand poured into molds for our consumption.

Bullets= Machine made utilizing Full Length Gas Checks as to provide projectiles for the masses.

Hiya Ken. We may be arguing over semantics, or this may be a case of "there's no perfect gun manufacturer."

When I say they generally have a sloppy chamber, that accounts to the back end of the chamber, say from where the end of the neck is back to the case head, ESPECIALLY over the feed ramp, but also around the entire circumference of the rear end of the chamber. This is what causes "smiley faces" on cases due to high-end pressure, or even blow-outs from over-pressure rounds. (See pics below.) And, this is what prevents Glock 10mms from being loaded to their full potential with the factory barrel. Fully-supported or more-supported aftermarket barrels can allow the Glock to shoot the same hot ammo as any other 10mm pistol.

Near the front of the case, certainly somewhere around where the bullet is being held onto, the chamber does tighten up. This partially accounts for the good accuracy of the Glock. Once the slide is in-battery, the front end of the loaded round is aligned pretty straight with the bore, thanks to the front end of the chamber and the positioning of the breachface in the slide.

So, the question always comes down to what part of the chamber was causing the problem?

I've had one particular pistol (Walther P88C) that has such a short and abrupt throat that it won't feed any factory ammo at all, and will only feed the nose-profile of the Saeco #115 (123gr Pointed RN) cast bullet. In other words, it was the abrupt (or even absense of) the leade that prevented any kind of bullet that was too wide out front of the case mouth from letting the slide close. (I've thought hard many times about opening it up, but the **** thing shoots so good that I'm scared of ruining it's accuracy - It will outshoot any other pistol I own and many rifles...)

I truly hated Glocks when they first arrived in the US. They were ugly, square, unrefined-looking (compared to my beloved 1911s with beautiful sculpted curves on the backstrap, on the bottom of the slide, the trigger guard, and the top profile of the slide...) and worst of all CHEAP! I begrugingly started to look at them after Miami PD threw them out of helicopters, drove over them with trucks, soaked them in buckets of saltwater for days, and other abuses, and they dang things not only kept working, but shot accurately.

I did my own testing of that first Glock 9mm I talked about previously. I acquired it in a trade from a police buddy who needed a Beretta. (I had an extra...) He had just gone through the academy with it as well as some other firearms classes and it had at least fired 4000 rounds in the previous 6 months to my owning it. I then put it through 5500+ rounds of lead-bullet reloads (mostly - there was probably 100-150 jacketed loads fired during this period) without any cleaning and with intermittent "tests" (such as throwing it against the railroad tie backstop at the range from the 25 yard line, and then function-firing it with a whole magazine). After 8 months of my torture and a total of around 10,000 rounds through it in 14 months, I was convinced.

Since then, I've trusted and depended on Glocks for the last 16 years on duty, and I've had very limited problems with them. BUT, Glock is no more perfect than any other gun company. I'm not a mindless Glock-robot. Matter of fact, I've gotten that new HK-45, and when I get it rolling like Iwant (LEM trigger and a proper holster), I'm going to switch to HK for my duty pistol. Glock will certainly have a lemon go through now and then. Sometimes they have a whole series of lemons when they find out some tolerence or specification is off. They have had several recalls, which they won't call recalls. But, the good news is they stand behind their product, even if they have a touchy ego about criticism. Still, a one-off problem chamber, or a whole series of problem chambers that weren't caught in QC, could explain what problem you had with your G-19. Overall, though, Glocks DO have loose chambers.

My chief complaint is that we can't get a definitive answer on WHY some Glocks/poly-rifled guns have problems with lead and some don't. Over on GlockTalk, one of the discussions centered around whether the barrel had been "broke-in" (a.k.a. the internal surface texture had been "smoothed-out" by shooting a few thousand jacketed rounds, before firing lead). This theory interests me, because it would explain my experience.

Years ago I had a p9s with a polygon barrel and it shot cast bullets well. There is an article about cast bullets through a polygon barrel in an old Wolfe Publication, "Bullet Making Annual: Special Edition."

My own Glock 36 has spit close to a 1000 cast bullets. Leading is present but it doesn't effect the accuracy much. I was told by a Glock amourer that Glocks can fire while slightly out of battery. The company things that lube fowling will exaccerbate the problem and lead to a situation where a case rupture can occur, so warn against cast bullet use.

I clean the pistol often to eliminate this problem, and when I an using Lee Liquid Alox Lubed bullets I wipe the loaded ammo and clean off the excess lube.

We had a number of Glock Kbs in the 40 Cal at work. The Department's armourer is a friend of mine and he felt that leading was not a problem as they once had a Kb on the first magazine fired through one of the guns. he felt that the pistol could fire while it was slightly out of battery. This combined with what he called a 'generous' chamber that wasn't very well supported and reloaded brass all combined in a negative manner occasionally. I don't know why they didn't spring for aftermarket Bbls for range use with reloads. It was hard to figure though. His personal gun had a few hundred rounds (reloads with commercial cast bullets) fired through it every day for many years. He never cleaned it much, only when the powder residue was approaching stalagmite/stalagtite stage, yet never had a problem (with that particular gun).

My experience is limited to 9mms in Glocks and they are apparently fine as there is plenty of support. I liked my Glock 26 better than the Beretta 92FS that replaced it, but not as much as my 1911 38 Super. I have been considering replacing the 92FS with one of those sexy looking frog green Army dude GeeLoks, but most of my shooting is cowboy and bullseye these days, so my desire is tempered somewhat.

"I'll help you down the trail and proud to!" Rooster Cogburn.

"Slap some bacon on a biscuit and let's go! We're burnin' daylight! " - Will Anderson (John Wayne) "The Cowboys."

I share MM10's view that Glock does the shooting community no favors with their "state secret" stance on cast boolit/reloaded ammo question. I own exactly one (1) Glock pistol, and another example of that make is not a likely acquisition due to the maker's kabuki theater approach to owner/operator safety information. A few years back, I was permanently pyzzed off by a factory rep's arrogance and conduct when asked direct questions about the kB issue on 40 S&W pistols. I wasn't the only one unimpressed by the company's attitude--the bean counters balked on a sale of ~2500 units that was practically a "done deal" until the shotcallers were exposed to Mr. Gaston Personality.

Are boolits a good idea in a stock Glock barrel? I don't know, really--the 45 ACP seems OK so far, and it has an octagonal form as opposed to the other calibers' hexagonal form. An aftermarket barrel would likely be a good idea, but a more likely scenario would be an initial purchase of a pistol/revolver/rifle that was lead-friendly to begin with.

I don't paint bullets. I like Black Rifle Coffee. Sacred cows are always fair game. California is to the United States what Syria is to Russia and North Korea is to China/South Korea/Japan--a Hermit Kingdom detached from the real world and led by delusional maniacs, an economic and social basket case sustained by "foreign" aid so as to not lose military bases.

I suppose when the Glocks came out there wasn't any immediate rivals, but now there are lots of god guns available as options to the Glocks. There is something about the big boxy gun though that gets you in.

"I'll help you down the trail and proud to!" Rooster Cogburn.

"Slap some bacon on a biscuit and let's go! We're burnin' daylight! " - Will Anderson (John Wayne) "The Cowboys."

I'm still blasting away with that Glock from time to time, kinda big for CCW but it rides in a UM-84 Bianchi flap holster as my truck gun much of the time. There is maybe 3500 rounds through it now, nearly all castings, and it just runs like a new computer for me. Zero leading. EVER.

If I were to own a Glock 9mm, 40 Short & Weak, or 10mm--I would likely go the route of an aftermarket barrel, because all three of those calibers are decidedly less lead-friendly than the 45 ACP, regardless of platform or bore form.

Glock isn't the only make in these calibers that can benefit from an after-market barrel, either--that 1-10" or 4 turns/meter rifling pitch in many 9mm and 40 S&W barrels is twice as fast as what is needed to stabilize the squatty bullets fired in these calibers. Both closer tolerances in chamber dimensions and the slowed twist rate can yield positive results in these calibers. My CZ-75B in 40 S&W has a 1-16" pitch, and is by some margin the most accurate 40 S&W I've ever fired--cast or jacketed.

I don't paint bullets. I like Black Rifle Coffee. Sacred cows are always fair game. California is to the United States what Syria is to Russia and North Korea is to China/South Korea/Japan--a Hermit Kingdom detached from the real world and led by delusional maniacs, an economic and social basket case sustained by "foreign" aid so as to not lose military bases.

I have a glock 34 and have used cast boolits and shot THOUSANDS of rounds. Like any firearm when shooting cast, you have to check now and then for leading. The type of boolit I shoot is straight linotype, using a Lee 125g TC and lubbed with Jakes Ceresin and loaded with 4.9 of Bullseye. Jakes Ceresin puts out a little more of smoke but I would rather deal with the smoke than the lead. I usually check my barrel every 100 rounds and found that leading is very very minimal.

This isn't really a lead in Glock update, but a Glock failure update. My new G30SF broke the locking block during the second range session today. The load was Lee custom 45BDCM over six grains Unique, and the offending round clocked 775fps over the chronograph. I don't think lead had anything to do with the probelm; the barrel wiped clean with one patch of ER. I think this was a poor casting taht failed in the first 500 rounds. I'll call Glock tomorrow to ask about a replacement locking block and pin. Tony

Howdy- Have multiple Glocks ( 1911's, too ). Have read of severe and rapid escalation of measured pressures in Glocks firing lead bullets, without visible "leading" as observable in conventionally rifled barrels. It was noted that IF the barrel was kept clean, their probably would not be a kb story to tell. Heat treatment ( or possilbly lack of same) of Glock barrels was mentioned.
Not being highly ( or even moderately) curious in this, I have stuck to jacketed stuff in my Glocks, but.....
Who's aftermarket barrels do you (who have changed them out) like? Know there are at least several to choose from, and cost varies accordingly.
Thanks!

LOTS of related info on The Gun Zone website, though the navigation takes some getting used to, at least for a dinosaur like me.

Hi Cowboy. First off, I'd take EVERYTHING one reads about Glocks, and especially kaBOOMs, at The Gun Zone with a HUGE grain of salt. The guy that invented the term "kaBOOM" runs that site. He's not what I would call an objective source of information.

Glocks barrels, slides, and large/major/non-stamped other metal parts are treated with what Glock calls "tennifer." This is called Melonite in the US and is a heat-treating process that creates a super-hard surface with a softer center, thereby giving all the resilience that one could want in metal. (Kind-of like the samurai-sword: it's surface is hard to resist abrasion and other damage, but it's core is softer to prevent the overall product from being brittle.) The factory reps sharpen class members pocket knives during the Armorer's Course with the broad, flat surface of the top of the slide. (Put a fairly nice edge on mine... )

As far as aftermarket barrels, the two high-end ones are Bar-Sto and Jarvis. Great barrels in terms of quality and accuracy. Both will hand-fit the barrel if you send them the gun. Prices are pretty high, around $200.

You can go all the way down to $75-80 bbls, but I don't know if I'd trust my life to them... Rather stick with the factory barrel and clean it once in awhile...

KKM and Lone Wolf have the middle-of-the-road barrels. Around $100, decent quality (but not as good as Jarvis or Bar-Sto), and they're almost always a drop-in fit. These are what most people choose, I believe.

BTW, Glock factory prices for new barrels is around $135, depending on model.

Howdy-
Geez whiz, an owner of no fewer than 5 Glocks comments on what he's read, and gets the equivalent of chewed out for not just saying, " never had trouble with mine" The reason I don't used cast in my Glocks is simple- I have too little trust in stuff not recommended by researchers OTHER THAN THE MAKER. If not even THEY can agree, DON'T DO IT.
As for the "guy who invented the kB" running that website, well, someone has to. It's not like he's a member of the Brady bunch.
Might buy a barrel of other than Glock manufacture for one of my 21's, if my 1911's both suddenly disappoint me accuracy-wise, though I don't see that happening. Now, IF it became a cast your own only world, then I'd need to reconsider, like yesterday, and at great expense.

i have a Gen3 G17 thats pushing 20,000 rounds. about 90% have been cast. the key to me is a bullet thats hard enough. of teh shelf commercial bullets ARE NOT hard enough to shoot out of a glock. I shoot either pure lino or hardball in mine with ZERO problems related to the bullets. i did have a run if cast loads in bad brass that left me with some bizzarely shaped cases and one ruptured case (simply reloaded and kept shooting, no damage at all). i currently run it and a G20 with cast both with no problems.

FWIW ive seen a couple glock KBooms (one in person and one aftermath) both were 40 cals using handloaded ammo. the biggest problem with the 40 is glock made it fit in the 9mm frame instead of deisgning a deidcated frame like they did with the 10mm guns. they shaved a bit here and a bit there to make it fit. Not a good idea in my book.

i have a Gen3 G17 thats pushing 20,000 rounds. about 90% have been cast. the key to me is a bullet thats hard enough. of teh shelf commercial bullets ARE NOT hard enough to shoot out of a glock. I shoot either pure lino or hardball in mine with ZERO problems related to the bullets. i did have a run if cast loads in bad brass that left me with some bizzarely shaped cases and one ruptured case (simply reloaded and kept shooting, no damage at all). i currently run it and a G20 with cast both with no problems.

FWIW ive seen a couple glock KBooms (one in person and one aftermath) both were 40 cals using handloaded ammo. the biggest problem with the 40 is glock made it fit in the 9mm frame instead of deisgning a deidcated frame like they did with the 10mm guns. they shaved a bit here and a bit there to make it fit. Not a good idea in my book.

SW

Honestly many of those off the shelf bullets are not suited to ANY high pressure high intensity pistol cartridge, their alloy is too soft, and their lube just plain sucks. Some I tried in 45 acp would lead a Clark 1911 bbl heavily if loaded with more than 4.0 of bullseye.